(Revised July, 2011).
In a nutshell: I'm no expert. I just happen to be using
QuickBooks Pro 2011 and Peachtree Complete 2011 simultaneously
for different things. Please don't blindly apply what I say
here to your situation. What follows are suggestions. They are
not necessarily applicable to your situation. First ask your
CPA or accountant if they have a preference. If they have a
strong opinion, go with it. Are you going to keep your system
in cash or accrual accounting? If you don't know, or if you
make reports both ways, don't pick Peachtree, because they stick
you with your selection. Prefer three to a page checks? Then
QuickBooks. Do your customers or vendors change rapidly? Then
Peachtree is easier. Are you learning? QuickBooks makes it
very easy to make large changes to your chart of accounts later
when you learn new tricks. In general, QuickBooks is way more
flexible. Do you need a lot of hand-holding? Peachtree's
customer support is very slow to answer the phone, but once you
manage to snag them, they're super — but then PT seems to
have more bugs. Do you often have to compare two ledgers
side-by-side? Peachtree lets you keep two open at once. If
none of this gives you a clue, I'd guess QuickBooks because of
the ease with which things, such as the chart of accounts, can
be changed as you learn more.

OVERVIEW

Let me start off with weasel words. I'm not formally
trained as an accountant. I do use both Peachtree
(a Sage
product) and
QuickBooks (an
Intuit product) on a regular basis. I do not use all
the features of either. I am a treasurer for a small
corporation, a church, a public utility, and several small
groups. Other people help me with the bigger organizations,
but the church and small groups are mostly for me to do
alone. If I seem to be a penny-pincher, it's from dealing
with the church. They have no money to spare. Either of
these packages could handle an individual's personal
accounts or the accounts for a large firm. They are not the
only games in town. For one, Microsoft also offers
accounting packages, but I am not familiar with those.
Larger organizations and manufacturers will possibly want a
different sort of package called an ERP (enterprise
resource planning) system. Those may require staff to
maintain them and the vendor to install them. PT and QB are
for individuals and smaller organizations. But if you need
an ERP, you already know it.

Don't stress if you are a beginner. This requires diligence, not
genius. If you know how to guard your money, you already know
more about basic accounting than a lot of accountants. What you
probably don't know is how to obey the law on reporting, and the
laws are often utterly irrational. If you can't figure out tax
reports on your own (and who could), neither package would allow
you to ditch your CPA (Certified Public Accountant). I do indeed
do my own reporting for the church. It takes hours and hours
even though the requirements for churches in the US are way
easier than, say, for most individuals. So assuming you are
using a CPA, all you really need to do is to record your
transactions, keep your receipts, and, in the process, get your
head around what you have, what you owe, and where you are
headed financially, and to be able to convey that information to
someone else in a way that they can understand. See this accounting
primer if you are just starting out.

When I decided to move some ledgers from a legacy (i.e. real
old and created here) system to a commonly available system, it
was suggested I use Peachtree. Well, OK, I was using QuickBooks
accounting software for the church at the time, but I was
already familiar with PT from long ago. That was back in the
day when most accounting packages were very expensive. Peachtree
made automated accounting accessible to small organizations. I
did some research, but at the time, I had trouble finding a
comparison report that seemed both unbiased and written by
someone familiar with both even though an awful lot of CPAs must
use both. I decided it would be an interesting exercise to study
anew the differences first hand. But my environment is not the
same as yours. There are a lot of features in both packages that
may be important to you, but that I have never tried. I know
nothing about running either on Macs. Sorry.

I may get e-mail (harrisons@writeme.com) back
that tells me I'm off the wall on a topic. That's more than all
right. If I'm wrong about a procedure or just seem clueless,
tell me. You won't hurt my feelings. But please stick to
specifics. I don't think you can reasonably accuse me of bias. I
have a love/ (mostly) hate relationship with all four: PT, QB,
our own LS, and a much more sophisticated system used at the
utility. I'm not too thrilled with the LS even though I wrote
it. PT shares many of our legacy system's quirks. By odd
coincidence, they both came into being at about the same time. I am
using all four concurrently for different things. Obviously, if
I thought one were particularly deficient, I'd get rid of
it.

THE BEST THINGS ABOUT EACH

It is easier (to me) in Peachtree to see what account the money
came from and to what account it went. In fact, it is just
easier in general to see what is going on in PT. You can type a
list of names, addresses, and phone numbers as plain text
separated by commas (if your list is in Excel, Excel can export
it as a .CSV file) and import it to Peachtree. You can import a
list into QuickBooks also, but they don't just let you just pick
and choose the fields. Also, Peachtree will let you start afresh
and ditch all the customers, vendors, and what-have-you that
you'll never use again.

If I had a rapidly changing list of customers or vendors, I'd
consider choosing Peachtree for that reason alone. QuickBooks 2011
Pro allows importing from Excel, but ditching the old customers is
hard. PT gives you some free backup storage on their servers.
Peachtree 2011 Complete (and this is a biggie) allows you to have
two ledgers open at once. How did QB let itself get behind on that
one? QB did add the ability to open two ledgers to its much more
expensive Enterprise version, but even then, funcionality is
limited. I expect QB will improve this feature.

QuickBooks has an added layer of referencing that allows a user
to have true sub-accounts (and freely move accounts to any order).
Peachtree does not have sub-accounts. You can have account
identifiers in Peachtree like Office.01 and Office.02 and then
"mask" off the numbers to get a total of just Office, but QB will
let you make an account with an "account number" of "Office". You
can then click on Office.01 and use your mouse to move it under
Office as a sub-account. You can do this even after you have posted
transactions to it - just as long as Office.01 is the same type of
account as Office. It is a great advantage to be able to change
structures and spiff up account identifiers – with or without
reordering – as you go. QuickBooks added some ability to
color individual ledgers differently. It isn't nearly as striking as
different Windows desktop color schemes. The QB home screen stays
the same. The bars at the top change some. Still, this is huge. It
alerts you when you open the wrong one of similar ledgers. Compare
the figure below to the one above. You see a bit of green on the
icon bar. I had hoped QB Pro 2011 would improve on this feature,
but it's the same as 2010.

In short, the worst things about Peachtree are periods (see
below), the lack of sub-accounts, difficulty in changing
account identifiers, difficulty in duplicating transactions,
slow execution, inability to change individual ledger
appearance, and having to stay on hold a long time when you
call them. The worst things about QuickBooks are the inability
to delete history completely, obnoxious marketing, and the
inability to have more than one ledger open at a time.

Peachtree does things by the month. You can't get a balance sheet
as of the middle of a past month, and it will drive you crazy making
you reconcile by the month. It demands the statement date be within
the currently set accounting period. (Why!?) But unlike QB, PT says
nothing if your balance does not agree with the banks. QB won't let
you continue in reconciliation unless you agree with the bank. (QB
will let you leave the reconcile process, fix something, then return
without losing any work). I'm sure PT has a philosophy that
restrictive periods help prevent errors. Maybe so, but it is not
worth it. There are always little things you have to add in another
month when you reconcile, and Peachtree will bug you about changing
periods. PT will also drive you crazy warning you that you are doing
lots of other things out of the current period. Of course you are.
All at the same time, you are going to be fixing the prior end of
month entries, writing checks in the current month, and posting
utility bills that will be automatically debited in the next month.
Earlier, we would have scheduled these for payment at a given time,
but times have changed.

Peachtree is slower. In general, comparing similar situations
and actions, Peachtree takes about three times as long to do a task.
If someone else uses PT on your network, they may bug you leaving a
ledger open even when they are not using it. Starting it up takes
around a minute. To me, that seems to be a relatively minor
inconvenience.

Chances are, if you posted a transaction dated a certain day, you
will want the next transaction, even if it is a different kind,
dated that same day. QB usually knows this (memorized transactions
being an irritating exception). PT does not. PT will slap the
current date or, more likely and less sensibly, the first day of the
current period wherever it wants. That includes when you void a
check (really a more standard way of doing things). QB makes it easy
to click the check void even if it was posted long ago. You can
still choose to do it the "right" way. PT demands you declare
whether you are using cash or accrual accounting when you set up
your ledger. Then you are stuck with it. I hope you are absolutely
sure. If not, don't choose Peachtree. Personally, I use both.

There are reports such as workers comp that require totals for a
year beginning at the middle of a month. You get to do it by hand in
Peachtree. PT has made noises about making this easier in the
future.

Where's the duplicate button in Peachtree? (Actually, as I write
this, PT says it is in their 2012 version). I use it all the time
in QuickBooks. But QuickBooks, not to be completely outdone, will
let you neither duplicate nor memorize a payment against an invoice.
Payroll liability checks can be memorized but not duplicated.
Payroll checks certainly cannot be duplicated. That would make
manual payroll easy.

I suppose QuickBooks marketing does do a better job of selling
stuff for QB than Peachtree's marketing. That's a good thing for
shareholders, but unpleasant for the customer. QB marketing has all
the charm of a New York thug. It is intrusive. During the startup
process, the program demanded to know, for example, how many
employees we have even though we do payroll manually. The only
purpose for such a question is marketing. Moreover, their terms of
service require you to answer honestly. So I was pretty steamed even
before getting to registration. You used to have to call and speak
with a representative to register. I can only guess that was to
give QB another chance to sell you stuff and ask intrusive questions
again. Indeed, that was the way the call began. I was not just real
polite and told her I was in no mood to be hassled. Registration
took a long time, mostly asking me to repeat what I had already
entered into the computer or into their phone system, but the
representative backed off of trying to sell me anything. I regretted
snapping at her after I hung up. She was just doing what her company
had ordered her to do. (She sounded nice. I hope she finds another
position that does not require her to act that way).

QB no longer makes you call every time. If you have to, I
suggest at least trying to start out politely advising the
representative you will not answer personal questions and to ask him
or her to refrain from any marketing. If they persist, have at. QB
has an option to turn off pop-up ads. It works, but only most of the
time. Ads pop up after an update, a new bank account gets you
online banking ads, and something about online backups flashes very
briefly when you start a backup. Are they shooting for subliminal
suggestions? Peachtree is getting worse about displaying ads after
an update, but the ads are easier to blow away. Then again, after
my last upgrade, PT sent me e-mails about every three days.

QuickBooks does let you do manual
payroll even though they flat out conceal it, but if you
select any of their other options including the "do it
yourself" option (which isn't exactly manual, but close), you
are definitely going to pay them a lot. Peachtree isn't much
better. What they offer is not exactly automatic payroll. For
example, both "let you" e-file payroll tax deposits. Big
whoop. Anyone can do that online for free. But Peachtree at
least does not try to conceal the fact that you can use their
product to do payroll manually and not pay them anything.

Other than being obnoxious, having expensive services, and
hanging tenaciously onto some history, the most bothersome thing
about QB is that it is harder if not impossible to get to the little
transactions involved in a superficially individual transaction. It
is possible to click on a transaction, say a paycheck for example,
and do a Transaction Journal report, but if you click on any of the
individual items, you just bring up the whole check.

Still, if you have a thick skin, and your income sources and
expense types do not change very rapidly, I'd say choose
QuickBooks.

THE BEST THINGS ABOUT BOTH

They organize your accounting so you can see where you are at and
report it in a way others can understand. Both are familiar to most
accountants, and both can help with your accounting chores. Both can
be bought inexpensively online. I got QuickBooks Pro on Amazon.com
for around $100. Peachtree is more expensive, and that seems odd.
Peachtree really is a more basic product. Locally, the prices are
likely to be higher (say by 50% or more) for both. Multi-user
packages are around $500. I have never figured out how you have two
people posting to the same ledger at the same time without major
collisions, but you certainly might have two people on the same
network working on different ledgers, and that requires multi-user.
The LS just locks a ledger after the first person logs on to it. It
can be viewed by a second person at the same time, but only the
first can change it.

Both PT and QB are difficult starting out, but you can do it,
maybe with a lot of cussing, and after a month or so, it will be a
whole lot easier than trying to do it on paper. You will also make
fewer mistakes. Both let you memorize transactions that you do
frequently. You click a memorized transaction, change the one or two
things you need to, then save it. For once, QB has a much more basic
approach. Hit control-M to memorize anything except payments
against an invoice and paychecks. It goes into one list. Double
click anything on the list, check, receipt, whatever, and a new one
opens. The date and reference number are not memorized. With PT,
you have to either keep clicking arrows until you find it, or
remember what you named it and type that in. PT has "memorize" on a
drop down list next to save, but it just seems to open a memorized
transaction screen with nothing filled in. PT will not let you
memorize receipts for some strange reason. Actually, memorizing
anything or retrieving a memorized transaction in PT is way more
complicated. Both let you customize your screen somewhat for, say,
shortcuts to things you use often.

THE WORST THINGS ABOUT BOTH

In short, neither PT nor QB attempt to allow you to use the forms of
the other program. Both allow only very modest customization, both
can give screwy reports, and the cut and paste feature we take for
granted elsewhere is limited.

Checking accounts now have three common ways to disburse funds:
automatic drafts, electronic funds transfers (EFTs) initiated at the
time of purchase (like by using a debit card), and checks. You'd
like to be able to click that you are doing an EFT and automatically
get a unique reference number for EFTs. PT does let you check a box
indicating an electronic transfer. But that grays out the check
number box.

QB does not have a provision for having more than one ledger open
at a time in their Pro version. PT does not allow backgrounds of
different colors for different ledgers so far. They do allow some
variation on color schemes, but it applies across the board.

Neither is great at reports, but both interface to other
reporting systems. You do not have to fool with that, but it is
truly handy for, say, e-mailing reports or reformatting them.
Neither PT nor QB will let you copy and paste from a report. (Eek!)
PT will, in theory, let you send a report directly by e-mail. I
can't get it to work. QB, typically, makes you subscribe to a
service to do that, and then e-mailing means you must log in to that
service. QB marketing really works hard to get you to make monthly
payments. Granted, that's their job. But it's my job to reduce my
organizations' expenses. It is possible in both to generate an
erroneous report without getting an error. QB allows classes.
Classes are to separate income and expense items into groups. If
you restrict a balance sheet by class, the report can be off the
wall. What you'd prefer is to get an error explaining what you did
wrong.

I have not used the report system Peachtree pushes, Crystal
Reports, nor can I use it. I keep a copy of everything on my home
computer in the event of a fire at the office. I have a home edition
of Windows. Crystal Reports won't run on it. So that's that. I
understand Crystal Reports will integrate with Peachtree so that you
can click and get the report without doing an export, but I'm unsure
why that would be any advantage. An export to Excel can be done with
one or two clicks on both. Crystal Reports seems awfully expensive,
more than $500. I use Microsoft Excel. Both PT and QB export to it.
That means you possibly want a copy of Microsoft Office. OK, "want"
is too strong a word. Microsoft Office is no joy in itself. It has,
however, become sort of a standard.

QuickBooks Pro comes with a very few graphs, but they are handy.
The income and expenses and budget vs. actual graphs look good from
the get-go with no fiddling – if your chart of accounts is
tidy. And, in QB, you can tidy up your chart. The version of
Peachtree I have does not have graphs. Since you can export to
Excel, you can do graphs that way. It's just a bit more of a
hassle.

There is an irrationally wide range of prices for Office. It's
probably cheaper to get it pre-installed on your computer when you
order it. Microsoft Works is not the same thing. Many computer boxes
imply they have Office installed when, in reality, all they have is
a trial version that expires rapidly. Older used versions are
available for less than $100 on Amazon.com. Pro new is about $400,
Small Business is about $300, and Student Edition about $120. I've
known some big businesses that have negotiated prices less than $30
for their employees. Anyway, you probably do need a report system,
it probably will be Excel, and you have to figure that in the total
price.

Apparently neither can use the others check forms. QB can print
several formats, but not the one Peachtree uses (which is one check
in the middle of a page). I gather Peachtree can't even print more
than one check per page (thereby wasting two thirds of a piece of
paper). They're competitors. I can't be sure, but it seems like it
would be a piece of cake for either company to make a check format
to use up the old boxes of check forms you have. I assume both are
trying to coerce you into buying their forms. Don't do it. See supply ordering
for alternate choices on buying checks and forms. I wonder how
many people would like to switch but don't only because they would
have to discard a lot of blank forms. To either company, I'd say
your first job is to get us to try your product. There are other
ways to market rather than getting right in our face with your
dadburn halitosis.

Both allow only a modest customization of their screens, nothing
like you have on your desktop. You'd like to be able to right-click
an action and drag it to create a shortcut anywhere, but no. Neither
PT nor QB let you modify just a list of the individual transactions.
One paycheck can be made up of a long list of transactions.
Sometimes you'd like just to step through them looking for errors.
And yes, in doing that, you could throw a monkey wrench into
everything. I don't feel that is a good argument for not allowing
it, but then I'm not doing tech support for them.

Neither PT nor QB have a utility to delete companies!(?) It's
easier in Peachtree. They have the whole company under one folder,
so all you have to do is delete the folder. At least that worked
for me. One user posted they had to remove the name of the company
from the registry after deleting the directory in order to open any
other company. QuickBooks has more than one file for a company and
all the files are mixed under the same folder. When you delete the
four files of the company you are discarding, it can still show up
as available in QuickBooks under "Open Previous Companies". In that
same list, you can click to set number of previous companies. When
you reduce that number by one, the deleted company will eventually
vanish. Finding QB's files may not be straightforward, at least on
Windows 7. If you are in QB and browse to the files, you can see
the path, but when you click on the top directory of the path in
Windows, it says you don't have permission to access it. Hmmm. Do
a search for *.QBW and you'll discover the real path.

KEY DIFFERENCES

Account identifiers (account numbers) are really significant to PT,
and once set, you cannot easily change them. In QB, you can do with
or without them (but life is a bit easier with them). You can also
add them and change them at any time. The changes occur at once
everywhere in the ledger. Also, reference numbers, such as receipt
and check numbers, are more important to PT. Funny things happen to
PT reports when reference numbers are duplicated. It will warn you
if that is about to happen, but will not automatically show you the
duplicate. QB will optionally fill in a lot of reference numbers
automatically. Then there is this business of accounting periods
which rule your life in Peachtree, but which mean so little to QB
that you can't even totally erase ancient history without an amazing
amount of work. In PT, you have to choose cash (count money when
paid) and accrual (count money when promised) accounting. And then
you are stuck with it. QB lets you change between cash and accrual
on the fly. That is of some importance to me. Also of importance is
QB's feature of associating a color scheme with a ledger and PT's
feature of allowing two ledgers open at once.

NOT SO KEY DIFFERENCES

Change a date on a transaction in QB, and the date on the report you
have open changes also. In PT, it doesn't always change. It may not
even be right if you refresh the report. I have had to delete a
transaction and add it again just to get the date changed cleanly.
That's just a bug. When writing a check or a deposit, you write a
memo to tell what it is for. Oops, posted it to the wrong account.
Change the account in PT, and the memo is erased because the default
memo for the new account gets substituted. This also happens if you
change the customer or vendor or add the customer or vendor. QB
used to do that also, but they're better now. They ask first. Why
in the world would their programmers not check a field to see if you
had already put information there? Moreover, why would a blank
default memo even be considered for use to overwrite a field? It is
blank! There isn't one. We're going to fill it in when we write
the check. That goes for all the defaults. By the way, PT, if a
field has a single blank character in it, it is still blank. So
please do not try to create an account, customer, or vendor with a
blank identifier. QB bugs you with overbearing marketing. PT bugs
you with, well, bugs, and somewhat less obvious nomenclature.

When you change periods, PT asks if you want do do reports and
other things. Mind you, you are going to be changing periods back
and forth, so these questions get annoying. One report is an
internal accounting review to look for common errors. I thought this
was going to be a super feature that made it stand out. Alas, that
was not my impression. The first thing it said was that "9 of the
checks have found no transactions". What the heck did that mean?
What's wrong with the checks I wrote? After hunting on the web with
no success, it finally dawned on me that what it really meant was
that "9 of the tests we ran found no problems". The two "problems"
it found included an account that had not been reconciled (i.e.
checked against the bank statement). It had no transactions at all
at that point. I did try "reconciling" the empty account but without
success. The other had to do with default information I was never
going to use. This report just once did alert me to a minor
problem. Posts in the future can be automatic drafts. They are
common now, and getting more so, and they are probably not an error
even though PT flags them.

QuickBooks optionally uses an account for receipts that are not
deposited. When you make a deposit, a special transaction flags the
items in that account, totals them, and then increases your checking
account by the total. Once in awhile, you will have to change
something in a deposited item. QB will scare you saying you have to
delete the deposit first. But deleting the deposit does not delete
the items. First, make sure everything else has been deposited.
Then go ahead and delete the deposit, make your change, and make the
old deposit again. It's not too hard, but it is a minor run-around.
Predictably, Peachtree takes a much more basic approach. For both QB
and PT, a blank check number tells the system a check needs to be
printed. With Peachtree, a deposit ticket number tells the system
the item has been deposited. I prefer PT's system, I guess, but with
QB, you can annotate the deposit itself — even adding items,
like, for example, a refund check. Once in awhile, I find this very
helpful.

IN GENERAL

Peachtree is older than QuickBooks and shows it. But also PT seems
to be more familiar to CPAs who have been around awhile. It could
be a real advantage to you to use the package your CPA prefers. Ask
him or her. PT has tighter restrictions on the length of vendor and
customer names, but both have limits. Peachtree is less complex
internally. It doesn't seem to have changed much in years, and I'd
guess its users don't want it to change much, at least not in a way
they can see. PT quaintly warns you before backing up that it will
be using a few megabytes, even though that much data will just be a
blip to your terabyte drive. QB has changed, but mostly in the way
it tries to force you to buy things you don't want. Some say PT is
harder to understand by those who are unfamiliar with accounting. I
disagree. You may see the words "debit" and "credit" more than in
QB, but that's no big deal. See the accounting
primer. I'd think it would be easy for either company to
generate reports that look exactly like the other company's save
for the sub-account business discussed later. PT really isn't as
flexible as QB. For example, to put accounts in your preferred
order in QB, you grab the account with your mouse and put it where
you want. Then it stays in that order for reports. In PT, you can
sort accounts on any of the columns, but you can't just choose any
order. I'm not bragging on QB. They have bugs in sorting
themselves. I want my QB checks sorted by date then by check
number. That's not an option! I selected the closest one which is
date, type, number.

To me, the choice between QB and PT is not between products that
are more or less intuitive. It's more between a basic product and a
product with more bells and whistles. You know exactly how the
basic product works. It's reliable. A more complex product can do
a lot more things, but in some cases, it isn't as reliable just
because you can't see what's going on. For example, I have single
simple receipts that show up on a general ledger as a list of
transactions; the actual transaction and a list of other zero
transactions. Click on any of them and all you get is the one,
unchangeable normal receipt. I just want to delete those zeroes. I
can't get under the hood to do that. To me, that is not a good
thing.

Not too infrequently, when I make a QB backup, it will warn me
that there is an error in the data and that it has to rebuild the
database. It does it automatically, but it bothers me. What is
going on deep in QB that allows an error to pop up? Is it something
that Peachtree should do but does not? PT says they added a system
check in the 2012 version. Sometimes Peachtree will say it cannot
connect to the server when, for other programs, there is no
problem. Repeating opening Peachtree fixes that. Minimized
Peachtree reports re-minimize the first time when double-clicked.
It bothers me these bugs aren't being fixed. I'm not the only one
who has noticed them. But quirks or not, people (I wonder how
many) use them both with great success. Just make sure you keep
your eyes open for glitches.

The church started with Premier Non-Profit QuickBooks. When it
abruptly quit giving basic customer statements, and I realized I
was stuck with a reinstall anyway, I decided to downgrade to a new
version of QB Pro. Premier Non-Profit QB could not even do a
complete end of year contribution statement for donors. That's the
most important report for a church. QB does do the basic customer
statement for payments against an invoice. For a church, that would
be payments against a pledge — but what about plate and
flower donations? Why spend the extra money if the package doesn't
even fit the company's basic needs? Big Red Consulting
sells an inexpensive package that adds-on to Excel (there's Excel
again) to do the donors' statements, but Big Red is limited by what
QB will export. You don't always get the check number exported
because "the number" to QB may be a transaction number or a check
number — QB gets to choose. And since QB can automatically
create the transaction number, what it prints on reports, if not
the check number, may as well be a random number. It sure would be
nice if they had "check number" in their list of items to print.
(They also get to choose which memo to give you, the one on the
check or the one filled in on the split list below).

So far, the only thing I've missed with QB Pro that I had with
Premier is that I can't export a report template then import it to
another ledger. You can import report templates with Pro. Go
figure. And QB, why don't the reports keep a tiny template
identification? I have learned to tuck one in a footer. It's a real
guessing game to decide what template a memorized report started
out with.

QuickBooks may be more complicated internally than Peachtree,
but not on the surface. It is not harder to use. In general, it
isn't terribly easier to use, either. Peachtree could add true
sub-accounts without changing how it interfaces with its users. But
a whole lot of programming went into QB to add those features.
Marketing did apparently lean on development in both companies to
make a conversion package. Because Peachtree does not have true
sub-accounts, when you convert from QB to PT, the result is a mess.
The super accounts get moved as simple accounts, and their balances
added in with the sub-accounts duplicating a lot of transactions.
What you'd have to do first is to move all the QB accounts to the
same level. I'm unsure what would happen if account identifiers
were turned off in QB. I moved data the other way with
success prior to 2011.

I tried to move PT ledgers to QB in 2011 and could not. It
wasn't just me. The QB tech could not take control and do it
either. I suspect the free conversion program is not compatible
with 64 bit Windows 7. He asked if I'd pay $50 a ledger, and I
would. The PT backups were uploaded and returned converted the
next day.

Peachtree "closes" periods. You can start fresh at a new year.
Actually, you have to. PT will only deal with two years at a time.
QuickBooks pretty much leaves everything open indefinitely. For QB,
for most uses, an accounting period is a day. You can lock and
password-protect it, but QB history sits with all of its errors and
megabytes. You cannot delete items, accounts, or anything used in
even the most antique transactions. They do have a utility to
condense or clean up your ledgers. One would hope it would replace
old transactions with a single start balance then let you delete
old vendors and customers. It just isn't that simple because they
try to allow you to retrieve reports from the closed periods. It
is much cleaner to keep the old data as a separate company. The
result of condensing is only a somewhat reduced data base. (Hey,
my legacy system at least closed years). Yes, you can start a new
QB ledger as a new company and ditch it all. They do not make it
easy. Actually, it is so bad that I need to tell you how. See below
for the horror. Now compare this with Peachtree with its monthly
periods. That sounds a little better until you have to get a
balance sheet as of November 15th in a prior year. No way, just
like with my legacy system. With Peachtree, you'll get your balance
sheet as of November 30th whether you like it or not. Maybe it
would be harder to change than it sounds, but it at least seems
like PT is just being lazy. It is also hard for me to believe that
it would be unreasonable to create a routine to close QB as of a
certain date, say two years ago, split ALL of the old data off as
an archived separate company, and start fresh, discarding long
unused items, customers, vendors, reports, and icons.

STARTING ANEW

If you are going to any significant work on a computer –
and a ledger is dang significant – you need to start
with some form of virus protection, password protection, a backup plan,
and a recovery plan. These things don't need to be
expensive. Virus software is a hassle. It can slow your
computer down in a bothersome way. Click the preceding link
for ideas. Print out a
chart of accounts for a go-by. I usually prefer something
more like the UCOA.
Whatever, you do not create all these accounts. You just
refer to your list and create the ones you need.

STARTING ANEW WITH QUICKBOOKS

This part is about the major job of starting fresh or all over in
QuickBooks. It's that simplicity vs. flexibility issue again.
Upgrading is a lot quicker than PT (see below). I did my last
upgrade complete with converting the data in about 20 minutes.

If you are just starting out, QB is easier. The hard part
is evading a bombardment of attempts to sign you up for things
for which you'll have to make monthly payments. If you blow
the pop-ups away, you click on File / New Company. After
naming it, go to Edit / Preferences / General and click "turn
off pop-up messages".

But if you've been doing this for a long time, what about
all the old baggage from years of using the same ledger? If
you have an old ledger you'd think you'd be way ahead of the
game. What you'd like to do is erase all but one year's worth
of transactions, or start a new ledger retaining just one
year's worth of transactions. Intuit doesn't really make it
that easy. Truly restarting is almost worse than starting from
scratch. You can export accounts and many (but not all) lists
and read them into another company. But QB does not export
transactions. Big
Red Consulting makes an add-on that moves transactions. It
really didn't work for me completely as expected. Payments
received were not properly credited against invoices. I had to
re-enter the payments. Everything else seemed to work all
right. Memorized reports can be saved and picked up in the new
company one damn report at a time – and that only if you
have Premier or better. The memorized transactions list gets
lost. You get to recreate them all, and the same for payroll
items. You'll find a few tricks handy: re-name the old ledger
to be something obvious. Change the background colors of the
ledgers. Third, on the old ledger, get what list, check, or
what-have-you that you already have and do a ctrl-alt-prt scr.
Then open Paint (or other image utility) and do a ctrl-V. That
pastes the screen shot into Paint. Then you can use it as a
reference in the new ledger and switch back and forth between
the two. Of course, it would be much better if you could open
two ledgers in QB at once and flop back and forth cutting and
pasting. The LS does let you open two at once, thank you very
much, but I admit there is no way to cut and paste from my
LS. PT also lets you open two. They do allow some cutting
and pasting.

The last trick is for those who do manual payroll. QB goes
to great lengths to conceal that you even can do manual
payroll in QB. They want you to buy additional products. You
have to work to evade the evil marketing department. Some
sweet soul named lefflermhocking
made a beautiful video showing exactly how to do it. And
trust me; it helps a lot to be shown how. The incredible thing
is that what she shows you is to navigate QB's help menus.
That's how hidden it is. You have to be helped to use the help
menu. Isn't that illegal? Going to great lengths to conceal
free functionality is a deceptive marketing practice - at
least as I see it. There is reason for them to go one toke
over the line. QB has a lot to lose should you manage to find
and choose manual payroll. Their "you do it yourself" option
(they update the tax tables) is currently $249 a year for
three employees and $349 a year for more. Their "assisted"
payroll is $780 a year for five employees. Because of
convoluted tax laws, payroll will always be a major hassle.
But no matter how much you may pay a third party, you yourself
are still going to end up doing most of the work and bearing
the responsibility.

When you are receiving money, QuickBooks requires an item
like the name of something you would sell in a store. So
you'll have to set up at least one item. It could just be a
synonym for an account. When writing a check, QB will let you
post to an account, or let you give it the name of an item you
are buying, or both.

STARTING ANEW WITH PEACHTREE

It is easier to start up in Peachtree, but not enough that you would
base your choice on that. Actually, the first step, upgrade or
install, is way more difficult. I had to upgrade four computers.
One is a server with the data, two are workstations, one is a stand
alone backup. I had a different error on every computer and had to
call tech support twice. You have to register to do that. I was on
hold for 18 minutes to register. I was then on hold for 25 minutes
for tech support the first time and 45 minutes the second. Gad!
But the techs were nothing short of classy and knew exactly what to
do. One was a "change" (i.e. a bug) in the networking provided by
Pervasive. It took the tech an hour to ensure she knew how my
system was set up. Then the fix was simple, just moving a mapped
drive from the folder where the Peachtree data actually was to the
directory above it. The upgrade ended up taking over five hours. Of
course, when I was on hold, I had the phone on squawk and was doing
other things. Look, before calling PT (or, for that matter, any
government entity or big bank) for any reason, go to the john and
get a cup of coffee. The upgrade was a problem for me and PT both.
PT must have lost money on me. I don't want them to go out of
business. PT says network installation is easier for their 2012
version. I sure hope so.

When starting a new ledger, PT scares you by saying only
accountants should set up their own accounts. That's not true. You
can use one of the links I gave above. The UCOA page has files that
can be imported directly into QuickBooks, but the whole thing is a
bit much unless you're a non-profit that has to file a form 990 -
churches don't.

I also doubt most organizations or individuals would choose to be
stuck in accrual accounting, no matter what they urge, and, don't
forget, once you pick in PT, that's it. When you set up your
accounts, the account identifier space says "account number". It
doesn't have to be a number, but there does have to be an
identifier. You'd better set up the retained earnings account first.
Then get an account list. For some reason, if you don't get the
list, it complains like crazy you don't have an RE even if you have
added it. Another bug. When you set a starting value for an account,
it doesn't ask what account to use for beginning equity. It just
creates an account named -1. I don't know why it doesn't ask what
account to use.

When setting up a new ledger, equity is the account (or accounts)
from where initial balances are posted. Just set up one account
with a beginning balance, then change the name of "-1" to what ever
you want. Isn't that a bit odd? As I see things, it should
automatically create retained earnings but ask for you to name the
beginning equity account.

Adding customers can go quickly if you make a list then import
it. It sounds complicated, but it's really easy. Click on file,
Import/Export, and then choose your list. Click import. You will see
a list of fields to select. Scribble down on note paper which ones
you want. Then you can make a comma-separated plain text list of
those fields. Excel works for that as does Notepad. You may even
have it in Excel already. I gather you have to put the file exactly
where Peachtree wants to find it. I don't see any way to browse for
a different file. For the customer list, that would be customer.csv
under your documents. If you created a customer.txt file then try to
change the suffix, Windows will scare you with a warning. Just do
it. Try just one customer, then import a couple more, then you'll
begin to see what fields are important. On the first one you add,
you can define some additional fields. QB can now import customer
lists in a somewhat similar way. Since it so hard to ditch old
years in QB, you can have a lot of messy build-up in inactive
customers.

When you are receiving money, Peachtree, unlike QuickBooks, does
not require an item, but allows them (think item like you'd sell in
a store). So you can set up items. But when you write a check,
Peachtree lets you post it only to accounts. QuickBooks will let
you post it to accounts or items (think item like an item you buy in
a store) or both. That's really kind of handy. Peachtree demands
certain default fields be filled in even if you are never going to
use them.